Largo Sound

02/22/2021

When we hit the great wide open of the Straits of Florida, I wondered why there was not a single sailboat in sight. Wind was at 27 knots. Right.

Sarah started gingerly, using our gennaker. That worked. She and Tyler then put three reefs in the main sail, and that worked too. We made Christ of the Abyss in no time flat, as the only boat on the sea.

Sunny and bright, we had a dolphin escort at one point, and passed over a giant aged sea turtle. When we went to claim our first mooring ball, there was no rope, to catch with our hook, and we were in gigantic swells. We had John, our onboard former linebacker do his level best, but the aluminum hook was not up for the job and found itself floating at sea.

Not a problem. We caught up with it, and brought it back on board. In doing so we realized the tremendous drift that we were floating in, and the conclusion of the group was that this was not the day for snorkeling. Having done 59 years without Christ, I figured another couple of nights wouldn’t hurt.

We sailed to Largo Sound, caught a mooring ball, and embarked on getting our “Dinghy Badge.” The dinghy on this boat is held on a davit six feet out of the water. Lowering it involves the electric winch at the helm. Once in the water, after putzing about some, we were able to get the motor to start. We bounced across the waves, taking in lots of water and soaking the passengers, and as we approached a possible docking site, our dinghy captain inexplicitly did a ninety-degree turn and drove us straight into a rock wall on shore.

We bounced off, and found a janky broke down place to dock at an abandoned house. We tied off on a rusty half cleat, slipped through a hole in the fence and made our way to town on foot.

At the highway we split up for the first time all trip. John, Sarah and I hightailed it to a tiki bar while Karen, Tyler and Julie caught an Uber to Publix to re-provision.

When we returned to the dinghy, our Uber driver whipped out a stool and a guitar and laid down a flamenco performance out of the back of his van. We also noticed some sketchy characters sniffing around our dinghy. We disembarked with crucial supplies, and when I looked back from the water I realized we had sort of chosen an Addams Family style house for our dockage.

Back on the boat we had a wonderful evening. As we enjoyed breakfast this morning, John noticed we seemed awfully close to shore. Sure enough, our mooring ball had pulled up stake and we were adrift. Some drama ensued as we fought our way back to another ball, finally deciding to drop anchor instead.

Today’s target is the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. Our bird list for the trip is hovering at 40 different varieties, and there is a possibility that a walk through Dagny Johnson would allow us to pick up a few more.